Holmes Away from Home Volume II 1893-1894 by David Marcum (ed)

Author:David Marcum (ed) [Marcum, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: anthology, detective, mystery, Sherlock Holmes
Publisher: Belanger Books
Published: 2019-10-28T07:00:00+00:00

A Most Careful, Strategic, and Logical Mind

by Derrick Belanger

“Why, Holmes, I have just the thing to occupy our time on this frigid winter day,” I said to my dear friend. It was a dark January afternoon, and I was searching for an excuse to get my detective friend out of our residence at 221b Baker Street. With the holiday season, Holmes had not had a case in weeks, and his mood was as dark and unsettling as the London weather.

“You are of course referring to the exhibition on the American War Between the States at the Egyptian Hall,” Holmes muttered. The man sat staring out the window at the overshadowed London streets. The clouds were so thick that it was difficult to tell if the sun had risen. He had breakfasted on four smokes, and was now having his fifth of the day. I worried that Holmes was consumed by melancholia, but he surprised me in agreeing to venture out and see the show. “The Egyptian Hall has become a travesty of cheap magicians and shoddy spiritualists,” lamented Holmes. “It will be good to see the hall used for its traditional and proper purpose.”

Indeed, Holmes was correct. While the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly originally had hosted such exhibitions as Ancient London, a display of artefacts from London’s prehistoric past, as well as works by renowned artists such as Gilpin, Natts, and Pocock, it had over time devolved into England’s House of Mystery, a place more suited for P.T. Barnum than the Earl of Dudley. Supposed Spiritualists and practitioners of the dark arts brought forth floating spirits and balls of spectral light for the paying customers’ pleasure.

The American Civil War exhibit was unusual in that it was both honest and scholarly, but it ran for just two weeks, most likely to give the performers a chance to scheme up some new trick of making objects move with the mind or conversing with long since deceased members of England’s Royal Family.

After I managed to convince Holmes to put down his pipe and have food of real nourishment, we hailed a hansom and arrived at our destination. We stood before the architectural splendour of the hall’s facade. How odd it seemed that the entrance, with towering statues of Isis and Osiris, stone guards on the first floor above the papyrus columns, should lead to an exhibit on the world’s bloodiest war.

“Come along, Watson,” called Holmes. I hadn’t noticed that my friend had already walked to the Egyptian Hall’s entryway.

We both paid our admission fee and entered. Amidst the ankhs and figures of crocodile- and falcon-headed men was an insightful display of the devastating war between the Union and Confederate states of our American cousins. The artefacts were laid out in sequence from 1861-1865, with some brief descriptions of the events on signposts throughout the hall. The exhibit included everything from a thirteen pound mortar used in the Battle of Fort Sumter to a sword from a Confederate officer who was at Appomattox, where General Robert E.

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